Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The challenges that face the conductor and orchestra face when tackling Le Sacre are numerous. Players confront high ranges, complex syncopation, and shifting meters. Conductors must make thousands of decisions about dynamics, pacing, phrasing, tempo, tone color and more, all within the framework of Stravinsky’s inspired plan. While listening to these recordings I was ever returning to the score to be sure the orchestras were performing the same music or that I was listening to the correct segment. However, again and again I found the notes correct and that some minor matter of interpretation had thrown me off track. The three recordings are:

STRAVINSKY Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) Ballet Suite for Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor Recorded in 1929 by Columbia-Europe, this is the earliest recording of Stravinksy conducting "Le Sacre." Digital Transfer by F. Reeder.

The third recording of Le Sacre du Printemps is Conducted by Sir Georg Solti & leading the Chicago the Symphony Orchestra for London/Decca in 1974 - Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately you will have to buy this recording to hear it."Solti - A Passion For Music" Sir Georg Solti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The first thing you notice about the two early recordings is a difference in tempo and dynamics. The 1929 recording is slower on the fast sections and faster on the slow sections in comparison to the 1940 recording. Essentially the tempi are more consistent in the 1929 recording and this is also a characteristic of the dynamics. I observed over the span of the three recordings that the later the date the wider the spectrum of dynamics and tempo. There are some exceptions. For example, the 1974 recording of part II the Sacrifice is slow enough in the slow sections to make up for the speedier parts which results in a longer play time for the entire second part.It's fair to say that in general, the more modern the recording and the conductor, the greater range of tempo. Even Stravinsky himself demonstrates this as the 1940 recording shows much wider range of tempi than his 1929 performance.Trying hard to listen past the recording quality, there are some marked differences in orchestration as well. In the fourth movement of part II Ritual of the Ancestors, Solti uses tambourine which is totally absent in the two previous recordings. Another change in orchestration occurs in both the 1940 recording by Stravinsky and by Solti. Strings play pizzicato on the second movement of part I but in the 1929 recording the orchestra bows the notes. I am reminded of Stravinky's words in a letter to his editor.

“...for the "Sacrificial Dance," it was decided to delete the pizzicati, and they were in fact eliminated, but not completely, as I notice that some still survive in the score after 192 . . . . But what bothers me the most are these pizzicati in the entire "Sacrificial Dance." They were deleted as a matter of principle: we were being rushed, there were few string players available, and even these were below average; we had enough trouble in coping with the rhythmic complexities alone. But now I am seriously wondering if we do right in sticking to that decision. After all, some day we'll be blessed with better performers and performing conditions. In that case, wouldn't writing the strings [alternately] unisono pizz . and divisi arco be the better solution? And won't the dryness of pizz. strings accompanying the oboes provide a more concise and clear-cut rhythm than any bowing ever could? Perpetual arco bowing seems to me (but I am only at the conductor's stand) to produce a sound that is constantly thick and undifferentiated, whereas intervening pizz. would provide clarity and definite contours to the music.” (Cyr, Louis p.157)

There are a few other spots in the 1929 recording where Stravinsky chooses bowed notes over pizzicato.The effect of the bowed version is a slightly thicker sound that moves the strings part lower in relief to the rest to the sound scape and creates less depth overall. Another moment that is different in all three versions are the last notes of the final movement the Sacrificial Dance which is a sound reference to the virgins death and collapse.In all three recordings their were differences in timing and horizontal interpretation. That is to say, although Stravinsky indicated that the final notes were to be played all together (non divisi) neither he nor Solti did so. The import of the staggered notes is to create an aftershock of the girls body hitting the ground giving her a slight bounce rather than a thud.Bibliography

Monday, June 15, 2009

Composers of the late 19th and early 20th century found a dilemma as the traditional role of dissonance as a vehicle for harmonic motion was abandoned. The problem with dissonance that does not lead to an inevitable resolution is a total cessation of harmonic and thus musical motion. According to musicologist Stephen Walsh the great innovation of the rite is not the dissonance or the immobility of the harmonic progression because both of these ideas were in practice before Stravinsky’s work. Walsh cites Debussy’s Et la Lune Descend Sur le Temple Qui Fut’ (1907) as being both discordant and harmonically static. The true innovation was Stravinsky’s use of musical fragments and compelling rhythms to provide a structure to drive the dramatic action and thus free the frozen harmonic gears.(Walsh, Stephen p.44)

“What nobody seems to have done before the Rite of Spring was to take dissonant, irregularly formed musical ‘objects’ of very brief extent and release their latent energy by firing them off at one another like so many like so many particles in an atomic accelerator “ (Walsh, Stephen p.44)

Stravinsky’s method of composition for Le Sacre was to arrange and layer small cells of music. Each “cell” is both a melodic and rhythmic essence of the folk melody from which it was derived. See the Analysis below above recreated from the Stephen Walsh Book (Walsh, Stephen p.44 ) These musical fragments often consist of as few as four notes but they are repeated and reoriented to create ostinati, or stacked to generate chords, or embellished to create melodic material. Le Sacre was originally thought to contain only one true folk tune: the high bassoon part which begins the introduction. Later investigation into more of Stravinsky's sketches in 1969 revealed complete folk melodies copied from published collections (Walsh,Stephen p.43) Although, after being thoroughly worked, reorganized and chopped up by Stravinsky very little of the actually tune remains intact save for a faint essence of their musical personality. According to Van Den Toorn another strong adhesive component in the work is the ubiquitous use of the octatonic scale and it’s derived chords. (Van Den Toorn, Pieter)

"Indeed, The Rite is one of the most thoroughly octatonic of Stravinsky's works..." (Van Den Toorn, Pieter p.123)

Stravinsky not only employed the octatonic scale as others had before, he redifiend it's use and context completeley. By encorperating long steams of octatonic chords and seeding them with superimositions and chunks of diatonic material Stravinsky created a vocabulary all his own.

"... and to an astonishing degree, the vocabulary that informs this referential commitment remains intact: triads, dominant sevenths, and (0 2 3 5) tetrachords. The distinction rests primarily with the technique of superimposition. In The Rite , the (0, 3, 6, 9) symmetrically defined units no longer succeed one another, harmlessly, as they do in the operas of Rimsky or in the early Stravinsky passages cited above. These units are now superimposed—played simultaneously. And this is an invention from which startling implications accrue not only in pitch organization but, as a consequence, in rhythm and instrumental design as well. It radically alters the conditions of octatonic confinement, opens up a new dimension in octatonic thought that Stravinsky, beginning with Petrushka and The Rite , was to render peculiarly his own. (Van Den Toorn, Pieter p.124)

The octatonic scale is an eight note scale consisting of the pattern / H / W / H / W / H / W / H / W / The octatonic scale contributes to the atonal quality of the harmonies. But, it should be noted that Stravinsky was not limited to these sonorities and used many conventional chords in the Rite, although he did not use them in the customary way. (Walsh, Stephen p.44) That is to say they did not propel the harmonic motion as in a standard chord progression. Confronted with the same problem as his predicessors Stravinsky’s unique solution to the going nowhere feeling of atonal music was the development of the musical cell and his stunning use of rhythm.

Stravinsky layers each cell within a framework of rhythm. Ostinatos revolve continuously until their momentum is somehow resolved. Sometimes these repeating motives are quelled by the emergence of a diatonic melody, another hallmark of Stravinsky’s style. However, These oasis's of melody rapidly devolve back into tonal ambiguity

" Pierre Boulez once described The Rite as a piece in which a "vertical chromaticism" stood opposed to a "horizontal diatonicism." By this he meant that while the vertical alignment is often chromatic, the individual parts are in themselves often simple and diatonic."(Van den Toorn p.129)

Each pattern of stratified cells and rhythms emerges sometimes slowly and other times suddenly. Structures cycle, gathering steam, until they suddenly jump to a new parallel or they simply fall apart into quiet a sea of a new pulsing bass line. In the more aggressive movements the recitation of a motif often continues, building momentum, collecting thicker and thicker layers of melodic fragments like a snowball until it is shattered by a percussive explosion. These devises of rhythmic and motivic transition form the basis for the Rite of Spring’s cadential device. When harmonic ambiguity circumvents the listeners need for a resolution Stravinsky provides one with a change in either rhythm, density, or melody, or all three. The second movement of part two "The Augurs of Spring " is an example how layers build and then come to a close with a rhythmic cadence. Click on the excerpts below to have a closer look.

In closing it is important to remember that Stravinsky did not adhere to a particular method or theory. Perhaps the best thing about the Rite is it's freedom of imagination.

"I was guided by no system whatever in Le Sacre du printemps. When I think of the other composers of that time who interest me—Berg, who is synthetic (in the best sense), Webern, who is analytic, and Schoenberg, who is both—how much more theoretical their music seems than Le Sacre; and these composers were supported by a great tradition, whereas very little immediate tradition lies behind Le Sacre du printemps. I had only my ear to help me. I heard and I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which Le Sacre passed." Igor Stravinsky (Stravinsky and Craft, p.147-48)

Friday, June 12, 2009

"If the making of The Rite , of its music, scenario, and choreography, is complex and difficult to reconstruct, the stream of corrections, emendations, out-right rewritings and retractions that followed its initial performance is, regrettably, an even more tangled web of confusion, contradiction, and conflicting evidence." (Van de Toorn Pieter p. 39)

Le Sacre du Printemps was perhaps Stravinsky's most seminal work. And being such there is a possibility that he could not leave it alone.(Walsh, Stephen p. 45) Like a voice mail message or a final note to an ex-lover he pried and pecked at it not willing to leave it as it was to stand for all time.

A condensed version of this is Louis Cyr, "Writing The Rite Right," pp. 157–73 in Jann Pasler, ed., Confronting Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

For a brief survey of the editions see Claudio Spies, "Editions of Stravinsky's Music," in Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone, eds., Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky (New York: Norton, 1972), pp. 257–58.

Below is a table listing the major publishing dates and a very brief summary of the changes made in each.

The most tinkered with section of The Rite of Spring is the final movement The Sacrificial Dance . This movement went through a major overhaul in 1943 because Stravinsky was unsatisfied with the past performances of the work. (Van Den Toorn, Pieter p.40)

The 1943 revision of the "Sacrificial Dance" restored many of the pizzicato markings of the 1913 autograph and 1921 edition: pizzicato indications were added to the cello and double basses at nos. 142-49 and in the corresponding sections (nos. 1-9 in the 1943 score), while the pizz-arco alternation was reinstated for all strings including double basses at no. 192 to the end of the score (no. 53 + 3 in the 1943 revision) (Van den Toorn p.43)

in Expositions and Developments (1962), Stravinsky explained that with the longer measures in his earlier versions of both the "Evocation" and the "Sacrificial Dance" he had sought "to measure according to phrasing," but that later on, in 1921, his performance experience had led him "to prefer smaller divisions"; the "smaller divisions," he averred, "proved more manageable for both conductor and orchestra and they greatly simplified the scansion of the music. (Van den Toorn p.49 )

Despite his best efforts his revisions in 1943 did not stick.

"Most conductors have ignored the 1943 revision of the "Sacrifical Dance," with the unfortunate consequence that it has come to figure as just one of many appendages in the long line of revisions from the 1913 autograph to the newly engraved Boosey and Hawkes score of 1967." (Van den Toorn, Pieter p.40)

Thursday, June 11, 2009

I heard this piece on Radio Lab an NPR science show and I think it is pertinent to post here. It is rather long so you may wish to skip ahead to past the middle or so to go straight to the Stravinsky portion.

I was curious what Stravinsky would have composed if he had had a synthesizer or computer. What would the "Rite of Spring" sound like If Igor had been born in 1982 instead of 1882? Here is a quote form Conversations With Stravinsky

KC. Do you have an opinion about electronic music?

IS. I think that the matiere is limited; more exactly, the composers have demonstrated but a very limited matiere in all the examples of electronic music I have heard. This is surprising because the possibilities as we know are astronomical Another criticism I have is that the shortest pieces of electronic music seem endless, and within those pieces we feel no time control Therefore, the amount of repetition, imaginary or real, is excessive. Electronic composers are making a mistake, in my opinion, when they continue to employ significative noises in the manner of musique concrete. In Stochausen's Gesang der Junglinge, a work manifesting a strong personality and an indigenous feeling for the medium, I like the way the sound descends as though from auras, but the burbling fade-out noises and especially the organ are, I find, incongruous elements. Noises can be music, of course, but they ought not to be significative; music itself does not signify anything. What interests me most in electronic music so far is the notation, the "score.(Stravinsky/Craft p.125)

Here is Stochausen's Gesang der Junglinge . Stochausen also wrote the curious "Helicopter" string quartet where each player is in a separate helicopter and the work is performed whilst flying about.

Of course I did find the rite of spring arranged for synthesizer.This is Part 1 of Fuzzbach's interpretation of Igor Stravinsky's "Adoration of the Earth" from The Rite of Spring.The arranger notesthat it's a simple interpretation, and that some instruments from the original score are not represented in this interpretation.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The premiere of the Rite of spring in 1913 is a mater of infamy and speculation. Some basic facts illuminate the atmosphere to an extent. This was only the second ballet to show at the newly constructed Théâtre des Champs-Élysées since it had only been open for two months.

Igor Stravinsky originally composed Le Sacre to be a ballet. The work was in fact a commission from the great ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev who worked closely with famed dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. The final player in the production is really quite interesting. An artist, set designer, costume designer, Poet, amature archiologist, scholar, and preservationist named Nicholas Roerich.Stravinsky worked closely with Roerich on the scenario of the production of the Rite as well as entrusting him with the set and costume design. Roerich's lavish images and costume design added a rich exoticism to the original production. Here are some images of sets and costumes from the production.
The Choreography was entirely left to a talented dancer but inexperienced choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, who's work on the Rite has it detractors.

"the dancers adopting a pigeon-toed stance, their movements heavy and constrained. Apart from the Chosen One, they move in groups, their movements uniform and ritualized." (Garafola p.64)

No doubt Nijinsky had his work cut out for him as described in this article.

"The Ballets Russes dancers of 1913 detested working on Sacre. They had trouble counting the music. They didn't like taking orders from a 24-year-old colleague many of them had been in school with. Plus the temperamental Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky was asking them to turn in when they'd spent years turning out and to hunch over and pound their steps into the floor. In the Chosen Virgin's solo, Lydia Sokolova had to manage close to a hundred jumps--almost literally dancing herself to death." (Jowitt, Deborah )

It is also important to remember the setting of Stravinsky's Paris in 1913. It is fair to say that the Parisian elite had a fascination with the pagan history of mankind. The exotic Russian show would have appealed to a not altogether high minded fascination with the strange, explicit, sexual, and grotesque. John Merrick "the elephant man" had been on display in London a few decades before.

The audience was no doubt prepared for an erotic pagan scene for which Nijinsky and Diaghilev were known. Nijinsky had caused a stir a year earlier when he had represented a sexual act in his choreography for L'Apres-midi d'un faun. (White,Eric p.176) Diaghilev was a well known homosexual . The real scandal may have been more related to the strange choreography or perhaps a riot was just the sort of thing the Parisian elite were in the mood for on a warm night in May. Perhaps the Rite of Spring was just an excuse for a Spring Riot.

Stravinsky recalls the premiere of Le sacre on May 29th 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

“I was sitting in the fourth or fifth row on the right and the image of Monteux's back is more vivid in my mind today than the picture of the stage. He stood there apparently impervious and as nerveless as a crocodile. It is still almost incredible to me that he actually brought the orchestra through to the end. I left my seat when the heavy noises began light noise had started from the very beginning and went back stage behind Nijinsky in the right wing. Nijinsky stood on a chair, just out of view of the audience, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky shouting numbers to the dancers. I wondered what on earth these numbers had to do with the music, for there are no "thirteens" and "seventeens" in the metri cal scheme of the score.”
“From what I heard of the musical performance it was not bad. Sixteen full rehearsals had given the orchestra at least some security. After the "performance" we were excited, angry, disgusted, and . . . happy. I went with Diaghilev and Nijinsky to a res taurant. So far from weeping and reciting Pushkin in the Bois de Boulogne as the legend is, Diaghilev's only comment was "Exactly what I wanted." He certainly looked contented. No one could have been quicker to understand the publicity value, and he immediately understood the good thing that had happened in that respect. Quite probably he had already thought about the possibility of such a scandal when I first played him the score, months before, in the east corner ground room of the Grand Hotel in Venice.” (Stravinsky,Craft p.46-47)

Watch a scene from the Film "Riot at the Rite"

The film suggests that theater goers of the 1910's were prone to uncouth displays of objection. A look at history reveals that this type of incident was in fact common. Lynn Garafola Compares the reaction to Stravinsky's work to the reception of Wagner's Tannhauser in 1861 in her book Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. However, she illuminates further that the premiere of Le Sacre was particularly raucus.

"One smart lady slapped a hissing neighbor; another called Ravel "a dirty Jew"; whistles hissed; a composer yelled for the "sluts" of the sixteenth arrondisment - where many of Diaghilev's boxholders lived- to "shut-up". (Garafola p.64)

the artist Valentine Gross Hugo wrote about the premiere of Le Sacre.

''It was as if the theater had been struck by an earthquake,'' ''It seemed to stagger in the uproar. Screams, insults, hoots, prolonged whistles drowned out the music, and then slaps and even boos.''(Garafola p.64)

She goes on to say that the music was almost inaudible, and a ''very pale'' Nijinsky shouted the beat to the dancers from the wings, while Serge Diaghilev gave orders over the noise from his box.(Garafola p.64)

Jean Cocteau, a poet and artist said the noise was like a battle.

''Standing in her box, her tiara askew, the old Countess of Pourtales brandished her fan and shouted, turning bright red, 'It's the first time in 60 years that someone dares mock me,' '' he wrote. ''The worthy lady was serious. She thought it was a hoax.''(Garafola p.64)

Marcel Proust, who was also in attendance later wrote to Gabriel Astruc who had opened the theater a few months before :

''The difficulties you have faced will surely give the work a place in the history of art, more so than had it met with immediate success,'' (Garafola p.64)

"Le Sacre Du Printemps" was only performed five times that year three in Paris and two in London. It would not be performed again until 1920.

View a recreation of the rite of Spring in Choreography and set design.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Stravinsky’s early changes to Le Sacre as it evolved from sketch to a working score involved resetting note values and bar lines for for the sake of legibility, re-orchestration for the clarification and blending of parts, and rearrangements to the order of movements to better serve the story.

“we can generally assume that the majority of the previous hit changes next hit in barring and scoring were undertaken either to clarify the harmony and design (often by adjusting the orchestral balance) or, as indicated, to facilitate performance” (Van Den Toorn. Pieter C. P.39)

One example of a change in sequential order of the movements is described in “ Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring” by Pieter C Van den Toorn. Van den Toorn explains that Part I of the "Ritual of Abduction." originally followed "The Sage,"Iin the final score, however, it comes immediately after the first dance, the "Augurs of Spring." This change provides a musical buffer between two similar movements and facilitates the transition. (Van Den Toorn. Pieter C. P.31)

In a letter to his editor Stravinsky demonstrates his care and involvement with the production of the early score.

“I have verified, added to, and corrected everything in the "Errata." I beg you to copy all of this very carefully because we are working with Germans who do not know, or pretend not to know, French. The directions for the conductor must be printed separately, for which reason I ask you to make a special sheet for them. . . . Make certain that I haven't made a new mistake in the timpani at [nos.] 57 and 58–59, since I could easily have slipped up there. Please send it to Oeberg [director of the Russischer Musik Verlag in Berlin] well copied and clear, since you . . . are the only one who can put everything in place and coordinate the parts. (Craft, ed. p.159)

In "Conversations with Igor Stravinsky" Stravinsky explains his changes to the sketches in order to achieve greater clarity for the performer and his reservations about the infallibility of printed music.

“I do not believe that it is possible to convey a complete or lasting conception of style purely by notation. Some elements must always be transmitted by the performer, bless him.” (Stravinsky/Craft p.137-138)

" I did translate my Danse Sacrale into larger note values to facilitate reading (of course it is more readable, the reduction in rehearsal time proves that)." (Stravinsky/Craft p.21

He then explains his method of arriving at the proper rhythmic notation this he later contradicts if only slightly that changes to meter and note value may not have all too great an effect.

"As a composer I associate a certain kind of music, a certain tempo of music, with a certain kind of note unit. I compose directly that way. There is no act of selection or translation, and the unit of the note and the tempo appear in my imagination at the same time as the interval itself. Only rarely, too, have I found that my original beat unit has led me into notation difficulties. "(Stravinsky/Craft p.20)

”Who can take from dictation a passage of contemporary music in 6/4 and tell whether in fact it is not 6/8 or 6/16? “ (Stravinsky/Craft, p.20)

When asked by Robert Craft in his “Conversations with Stravinsky” if meters and bar lines had and authentic effect on the sound of the music Stravinsky replied:

“ up to a point, yes, but that point is the degree of real regularity in the music. The bar line is much, much more than a mere accent, and I don't believe that it can be simulated by an accent, at least not in my music. (Stravinsky/Craft, p.21)

Stravinsky explains his reasons for including markings to help his musicians for Le Sacre's Preimere and then for is desire to eliminate them for the published score:

“for the "Sacrificial Dance," it was decided to delete the pizzicati, and they were in fact eliminated, but not completely, as I notice that some still survive in the score after 192 . . . . But what bothers me the most are these pizzicati in the entire "Sacrificial Dance." They were deleted as a matter of principle: we were being rushed, there were few string players available, and even these were below average; we had enough trouble in coping with the rhythmic complexities alone. But now I am seriously wondering if we do right in sticking to that decision. After all, some day we'll be blessed with better performers and performing conditions. In that case, wouldn't writing the strings [alternately] unisono pizz . and divisi arco be the better solution? And won't the dryness of pizz. strings accompanying the oboes provide a more concise and clear-cut rhythm than any bowing ever could? Perpetual arco bowing seems to me (but I am only at the conductor's stand) to produce a sound that is constantly thick and undifferentiated, whereas intervening pizz. would provide clarity and definite contours to the music.” (Cyr, Louis p.157)

A look at these early sketches shows that Stravinkys creative process like his music at the time was without walls. He wrote sideways in the margins, he freely moved passagees about and changed articluation markings, bar lines, note values and meters to suit the performers needs. He made these changes, however, as an act of his own will and rarely if ever on the demand of colaberators.